Biodiversity Collapse
Wildlife populations have fallen catastrophically and extinction rates are far above the natural background.
Severity score
70.6
Critical · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Monitored vertebrate populations have declined dramatically over recent decades, insect biomass is falling in many monitored regions, and roughly a million species are assessed as threatened with extinction. The primary drivers are land use change, overexploitation, pollution, invasive species and climate change. The human cost is indirect but large: pollination, fisheries, water regulation and disease buffering all depend on functioning ecosystems.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
30Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
88People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
82Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
98Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
85Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.